Roxanne Snopek: On Hopes and Dreams, Overcoming Fears… and The Best Chicken Ever

If you’re like me, you’re always looking for fast, delicious but mostly easy recipes. I never roast chicken in the oven, but throughout the year, we roast chicken on the barbeque and I guarantee, it’s the most flavorful, moist bird you’ll ever taste.

It’s so good, I put it on the menu of the dinner-dance in my latest release, CINDERELLA’S COWBOY. In this fun novella, Cynthia, my stuttering, irrepressible wallflower heroine has to arrange the details of a fundraiser for cowboy-playboy Chad, who makes her believe in magic even though they are complete opposites.

Compared to overcoming fears, dreams coming true and little lost kittens, the chicken is pretty unimportant. But nevertheless, here’s the recipe. Try it. You’ll love it! (Need the roaster? Read on!)

Beer-Can Chicken

You will need:

A barbeque

A beer-can-chicken roaster

A roasting chicken

A can of beer – can also be soda, lemonade or any flavorful beverage.

Olive oil

Montreal Chicken Spice (lemon pepper or any barbeque rub would work fine, too)

How to do it:

Fire up the Barbie, nice and hot. Drink half a beer, saving the other half in the can. Slather a nice gloss of olive oil on your chicken, then sprinkle it with generously with your seasoning. Set the can in the roaster device. Prop that baby (watch out, it’ll be slippery) onto the can, ie: insert can into chicken. Yes, it looks mildly disturbing.

Turn the front burner off, but keep the back burner on, so that you’ve got a fairly hot (how’s that for specific?) barbeque. Set the chicken-and-device onto the front part of the barbeque, so that it cooks on indirect heat. Close lid. Pop another beverage and do something else for an hour or so while your chicken cooks.

Check on it occasionally to make sure it’s not burning. You may need to adjust the temperature or the position of the chicken. It’s important it doesn’t sit directly over the heat.

When the skin is a deep, dark, golden brown, the thigh bone moves easily in the socket and only clear juice comes out when you poke it, your meat is done.

Remove it carefully from the barbeque, then even more carefully, grab it with tongs and pull it off its beer-can perch. Put it on a warm plate and cover with foil for ten minutes or so, so the juices retreat back into the meat. Then, carve and serve.

Note: do not drink the hot beer. Actually, try not to look at it when you pour it down the sink. It’s pretty disgusting.

Now: I’ve got a beer-can roaster to give away to one lucky commenter. So tell me what you think: have you ever tasted beer chicken before? Have you ever cooked it? Do you want to try it?